While high-end notebooks aren't selling as well as they used to, lower-end laptops, sometimes called MIDs or Netbooks, are flying off the shelves. Asus inaugurated the trend with its first Eee PC, and now all the major manufacturers are lining up to get small and cheap notebooks into your hands.  But if they're underpowered and run on essentially old hardware, why exactly would anyone want one of these underpowered ultra-cheap machines?

For starters, the manufacturers aren't aiming for these laptops to be desktop replacements. Instead, the mini notebooks are meant to be complementary machines. Rather than create an entirely new machine with an entirely new OS with the ultimate goal of being "cheap," manufacturers instead decided to put parts together from older, less expensive technology. Throw in a free or last-generation OS, change the packaging to something small and compact, and you've got yourself a basic, highly portable no frills machine.

Netbooks fill a void few knew truly existed. While our obsession for building bigger and faster machines hasn't ended, an obsession with quick start up times, ultra portability and a simple way to experiment with hardware or with the open source Linux OS has made low-cost netbooks an easy purchase for many. Hardware hackers and users looking for a light secondary machine have started picking up the netbooks in great supply, and so have travellers looking for a machine with which to quickly check email accounts or take notes on the go.

Most netbooks come preinstalled with either Windows XP, or some variant flavor of Linux. Almost without exception netbooks, like the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, come with WiFi standard, so users looking to access the web on the go can whip out their netbook and hop online. Netbooks are great for standard web surfing, standard emailing and other low-resource tasks -- just don't expect to spend $500 on a laptop and play the latest and greatest games. Typically, netbooks also tend to skimp on the storage, so don't expect to house a large music or movie collection on the device. On the flip side, some netbooks (like the Asus Eee 1000) come with the option of a solid state drive in lieu of a hard drive. Because of their quick startup times and durability, SSDs can be an attractive alternative to HDs to a degree that offsets their typically smaller size (check out our guide to SSDs for a more in-depth look at the advantages of solid state drives).

If you're looking for the fastest computer, want to play recent games, or are looking for a device to handle your multimedia functions, skip the netbook and go for a full laptop. If all you're looking to do is surf the internet, type up documents, or do some instant messaging, the netbook might be a decent, low-cost compliment to your current computer setup.

 

Netbook profiles

For more information on some of the available netbook options, check out the following pages.

1. 
   Asus Eee PC 901
2. 
   Dell Inspiron Mini 9
3. 
   MSI Wind U120
4. 
   Asus s101
5. 
   Averatec Buddy
6. 
   Lenovo Ideapad s10
7. 
   Dell E Slim
8. 
   Acer Aspire One
9. 
   Samsung NC10
10.